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Showing posts from May, 2016

Painting Unseen | Hilma af Klint

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http://www.serpentinegalleries.org/exhibitions-events/hilma-af-klint-painting-unseen   Serpentine Galleries presents an exhibition of Swedish painter Hilma af Klint (1862–1944), who is now regarded as a pioneer of abstract art. While her paintings were not seen publicly until 1986, her work from the early 20th century pre-dates the first purely abstract paintings by Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian and Kazimir Malevich.  "The show of the year" - The Sunday Times This Serpentine exhibition focuses primarily on af Klint's body of work, The Paintings for the Temple , which dates from 1906–15. The sequential nature of her work is highlighted by the inclusion in the exhibition of numerous paintings from key series, some never-before exhibited in the UK. After graduating from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm in 1887, af Klint took a studio in the city where she produced and exhibited traditional landscapes, botanical drawings and portraits. However, by 1

Artist presents naked body as provocative tool

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Author | John Owoo (At large in Kumasi) Source: ArtsGhana A recent work by the Ghanaian performance artist Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi (crazinisT artisT) that made the familiar intensely political and the peculiar eccentric ended recently in the Ashanti regional capital Kumasi. Tapping deep into potentially traumatic subjects, Fiatsi exploits the “aesthetics” of human rights violations, sexism, gender violence, political injustice, xenophobia and religious extremism as a social process within the global community and powerfully comments on them. Using his naked body alongside braided hair and painted nails, the artist lays motionless on a mounted table covered in red and white sheets splashed with his own blood. In the midst of an eerie silence, he engages the audience with conflicting emotions of desire and revulsion, fear and fascination as well as provocation and irritation. Merging iconographic imageries of funerary rituals with an appropriation of the last supper from the Bi

Africa and how we write...

Africa is one vast Continent with over 2,500 languages or more. A billion people plus and in any one minute you can talk about the Africans kissing, hugging, making love, breaking up, being shot, being born, buried, blown-up-in-minefields. You name it, it is there. For the whole world to watch and judge at will. Taking from it what is good for yourselves at any one time. I can find you a starving baby, a crying Mother, a dying Aunt and a sick Granny. Just in that one minute. It is all there for all to take at will. Whatever suits your purpose. If you are so inclined and unkind as you rubbish the very face of Africa. Saying nothing positive just pointing out her faults, showing the world her weakness that lies within. Making out that without help she is useless. She is too fragile not to assist and even in that very assistance so too you are taking. Taking always taking, making out you are aiding but all the while you're abetting, on whether or not to steal the lot or just enough to

Serge Clottey written by Keilah Wells - French Version

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    Aujourd'hui commence un débat en cours sur la vie au Ghana, le premier pays sur le continent pour gagner l'indépendance, en 1957. Piloté par l'artiste, Serge Clottey, avec un entourage de collègues artistes de Labadi, Nima et ailleurs à Accra, Galerie 1957 ouvre ses portes au public à l'Hôtel Kempinski Gold Coast City. Le but du projet est d'expérimenter de nouvelles façons de voir l'art et le but de la culture à toute société. Contrairement aux générations précédentes d'artistes post-coloniale de l'Afrique, ceux qui ont reçu des bourses et des prix de se former dans diverses écoles d'art européennes, comme la Slade, la Royal Academy, le Collège international d'art ou de l'Ecole des Beaux Art Superiore à Paris, nous commençons maintenant pour voir un changement comme jamais auparavant. Les artistes choisissent de tourner le dos à la formation plus formelle de l'Ouest et préférant exercer quelque chose de beaucoup plus organique, origi